Smack Heroin and the American City Eric C. Schneider Winner of the Kenneth Jackson Best Book Award for 2008 from the Urban History Association "A sympathetic, engaging, and highly readable antidote to the war-ondrugs-style morality tale. At times the book reads like the award-winning and controversial HBO television series "The Wire." . . . Schneider draws his audience into a colorful narrative complete with larger-than-life characters, heart-tugging tragedies, and triumphant victories that complicate a more simplistic rendering of what constitutes right and wrong, legal and illegal, or mainstream and black market. He effectively humanizes the issue with testimony from users, dealers, traffickers, police, politicians, and educators to show how all parties in this conflict have struggled to bring justice and security to their communities."--"American Historical Review" "Schneider has produced that rarest of academic commodities--a page-turner. The book is exceedingly well written, and its fascinating research and analysis are sure to make it a central text in the field."--"Journal of American History" "Deeply researched and briskly written, with rare photographs and biographical vignettes to keep the narrative moving along, Smack . . . is a triumph of imaginative historical scholarship, though a bittersweet one, written by someone in obvious mourning for the drug-accelerated decline of America's great cities."--"Addiction" "Schneider's absorbing history of heroin's proliferation in America draws a parallel between the evolution and decline of American cities and the rise of heroin use. Rather than treating the city as a "backdrop," Schneider interprets cities as 'the organizers of the world opium market, ' and meticulously traces heroin's ascendancy from early 20th century opium dens to the 1920s jazz milieu and into the suburbs of the late 20th century when heroin finally attracted the attention of the mainstream media."--"Publisher's Weekly" "Since the end of World War II, American cities have been home to illicit drug markets where heroin has been among the most widely-sold products. "Smack" is Eric Schneider's masterful explanation of how heroin entered America's cities, who used it, what happened as a result and how obtuse public policy and naked corruption not only failed to check its distribution but sometimes even contributed to its spread. Schneider exposes the deep misconceptions underlying the nation's futile war on drugs and offers sane and realistic alternatives that, historic experience suggests, could work, if only public authorities have the courage and will."--Michael Katz, "The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State" Eric C. Schneider is Adjunct Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York." Politics and Culture in Modern America 2008 280 pages 6 x 9 14 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-4116-7 Cloth $49.95s 32.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-2180-0 Paper $24.95s 16.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-0348-6 Ebook $24.95s 16.50 World Rights American History Short copy: Why do the vast majority of heroin users live in cities? In his provocative history of heroin in the United States, Eric Schneider explains what is distinctively urban about this undisputed king of underworld drugs.

Heroin was only one drug among many that worried Progressive Era anti-vice reformers, but by the mid-twentieth century, heroin addiction came to symbolize irredeemable deviance. Creating the American Junkie examines how psychiatristsand psychologists produced a construction of opiate addicts as deviants with inherently flawed personalities caught in the grip of a dependency from which few would ever escape. Their portrayal of the tough urban addict helped bolster the federal government's policy of drug prohibition and created a social context that made the life of the American heroin addict, or junkie, more, not less, precarious in the wake of Progressive Era reforms. Weaving together the accounts of addicts and researchers, Acker examines how the construction of addiction in the early twentieth century was strongly influenced by the professional concerns of psychiatrists seeking to increase their medical authority; by the disciplinary ambitions of pharmacologists to build a drug development infrastructure; and by the American Medical Association's campaign to reduce prescriptions of opiates and to absolve physicians in private practice from the necessity of treating difficult addicts as patients. In contrast, early sociological studies of heroin addicts formed a basis for criticizing the criminalization of addiction. By 1940, Acker concludes, a particular configuration of ideas about opiate addiction was firmly in place and remained essentially stable until the enormous demographic changes in drug use of the 1960s and 1970s prompted changes in the understanding of addiction-and in public policy.

Thomas Szasz suggests that governments have overstepped their bounds in labeling and prohibiting certain drugs as ""dangerous"" substances and incarcerating drug ""addicts"" in order to cure them. Szasz asserts that such policies scapegoat illegal drugs and the persons who use and sell them, and discourage the breaking of drug habits by pathologizing drug use as ""addiction."" Readers will find in Szasz's arguments a cogent and committed response to a worldwide debate.

In May 1994, a box containing 4000 pages of internal tobacco industry documents arrived at the office of Professor Stanton Glantz at the University of California, San Francisco. The anonymous source of these "cigarette papers" was identified in the return address only as "Mr. Butts" - presumably a reference to the Doonesbury cartoon character. These documents provide a shocking inside account of the activities of one tobacco company over more than 30 years. This book seeks to show that the tobacco industry's conduct has been more cynical and devious than even its harshest critics have suspected. For more than three decades, the industry has internally acknowledged that smoking is addictive and that use of tobacco products causes disease and death. Despite this acknowledgment, based on the industry's own internal and contract research, the industry has engaged in a variety of tactics to deny its own findings and to convince the public that there is still doubt about the harmful effects of tobacco or that the effects have been exaggerated. These campaigns of disinformation, the text argues, have been designed to maintain company profits, to block government regulation, and to defeat

A history of drugs is a study of cultures in competition, argues editor William O. Walker III. Eminently adaptive, drug cultures have competed with proscriptive cultures to create a legitimate place for themselves, although one that the dominant society may recognize only tacitly. Professor Walker brings together forty-six essays that examine the complex negotiations and changing rhetoric revolving around issues of drugs and their control between the United States and its Latin American neighbors. Drugs in the Western Hemisphere is divided into six parts. Articles are arranged chronologically, offering the reader a compre-hensive overview of the evolution of U.S.-Latin American drug policy from the turn of the century to the Clinton administration. Part I, Cultures in Conflict suggests that clashes between members of drug cultures and proponents of drug control traditionally have occurred within the context of the forma-tion of the modern nation. Part II, Drugs in Latin America, 1920-1940 takes a closer look at inter-American policies revolving around drugs in the 1920s and 1940s. Part III, Wartime Experience and Part IV, Confrontation and Controversy examine how World War II both affected U.S.-Latin American drug policy and set the tone for many years to come. Part V, Drugs and Security and Part VI, Drugs in the Americas: An Assessment takes the reader through to the Clinton administration. Writers here note the concerted efforts of the United States to establish hegemony over drug control throughout the Western Hemisphere.

To this day, the perception persists that China was a civilisation defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade commodity, opium - a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in the iron grip of dependence. But, as this new edition of Narcotic Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese history was not the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early nineteenth century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp the consequences of prohibition. They reveal that opium actually had few harmful effects on either health or longevity; in fact, it was prepared and appreciated in highly complex rituals with inbuilt constraints preventing excessive use. Opium was even used as a medicinal panacea in China before the availability of aspirin and penicillin. But as a result of the British effort to eradicate opium, the Chinese turned from the relatively benign use of that drug to heroin, morphine, cocaine, and countless other psychoactive substances. The transition from a tolerated opium culture to a system of prohibition produced a 'cure' that was far worse than the disease. Delving into a history of drugs and their abuses, Narcotic Culture is part revisionist history of imperial and twentieth-century Britain and part sobering portrait of the dangers of prohibition.

This volume provides an in-depth look at the genetic influences that contribute to the development of alcoholism. Part I: Epidemiologic Studies contains five chapters that examine the various approaches employed in the study of the genetics of alcoholism. It provides a historical perspective and details all the essentials of this subject. Part II: Selective Breeding Studies highlights the results of research involving the selective breeding of rodents. This type of research has produced homogenous strains exhibiting specific behavioral responses considered significant in the development and maintenance of alcohol dependence. The studies presented in Part III: Phenotypic Studies investigate and analyze phenotypic markers that serve as correlates to the genotypic determinants of alcoholism. Through its broad scope, this volume provides for the first time a panoramic view of the knowledge available on the hereditary influences of alcoholism.

This practical resource provides a wealth of activities and photocopiable worksheets to use with children and young people affected by parental substance misuse. Children living in substance abusing homes are at risk of many different negative outcomes, such as behavioral problems, low academic achievement, depression and anxiety, low self-esteem, as well as self-blame for their parent's substance abuse. The activities and worksheets in this book have been designed to assist counselors, therapists and other professionals to facilitate group sessions for children of addicted parents. Each chapter reviews a different issue related to children living in substance abusing homes, and gives step-by-step instructions for leading a group session, accompanied by the latest research and suggestions for discussions based on best practices. Children will learn to reduce feelings of shame and isolation, better understand the nature of addiction, increase self-care and create healthy interactions. This is an essential resource for professionals working with children affected by parental substance misuse, including counselors, child psychologists, therapists, and youth workers.

Illegal psychoactive substances and illicit prescription drugs are currently used on a daily basis all over the world. Affecting public health and social welfare, illicit drug use is linked to disease, disability, and social problems. Faced with an increase in usage, national and global policymakers are turning to addiction science for guidance on how to create evidence-based drug policy. Drug Policy and the Public Good is an objective analytical basis on which to build global drug policies. It presents the accumulated scientific knowledge on drug use in relation to policy development on a national and international level. By also revealing new epidemiological data on the global dimensions of drug misuse, it questions existing regulations and highlights the growing need for evidence-based, realistic, and coordinated drug policy. A critical review of cumulative scientific evidence, Drug Policy and the Public Good discusses four areas of drug policy; primary prevention programs in schools and other settings; supply reduction programs, including legal enforcement and drug interdiction; treatment interventions and harm reduction approaches; and control of the legal market through prescription drug regimes. In addition, it analyses the current state of global drug policy, and advocates improvements in the drafting of public health policy. Drug Policy and the Public Good is a global source of information and inspiration for policymakers involved in public health and social welfare. Presenting new research on illicit and prescription drug use, it is also an essential tool for academics, and a significant contribution to the translation of addiction research into effective drug policy.

Packed with information, advice and learning activities, this book tells you what you need to know about drugs, young people's drug use, and how you can help them stay safe. It covers everything from what the effects are and why young people take drugs, to how to negotiate drug rules and ways to prevent and minimise harm. An easy to use section contains factual information about various drugs, covering a description of each drug, street names, a brief history, legal status, availability, extent of use and cost, effects, possible harms, and harm reduction advice. The newest and emerging drugs, such as legal highs, are included, as well as illegal drugs, alcohol, caffeine and tobacco. If you are working with or supporting young people or are a parent or carer, this is the book you need to help you understand drugs and respond positively and effectively to young people's drug use.

Many teenagers will come into contact with drugs, but do they know all the facts about drugs? What should they do if they feel pressured into taking drugs? Do they know the effects of taking drugs, and what the consequences might be? This resource is packed with activities that inform young people about drugs, encourage them to think and talk about their values and attitudes to drugs, and help them make positive choices. The engaging activities explore different types of drugs and their effects, and issues such as risks, consequences, peer pressure, attitudes to drug-taking, and drugs and the media. This second edition is fully updated and contains many new activities. With fun and imaginative activities ranging from ice-breakers and quizzes to role-play and poster-making, this book is suitable for use with young people aged 13-19, in groups and on-to-one. Teachers, youth workers, drug support workers, youth offending teams and social workers will all find this an invaluable resource.

Heroin was only one drug among many that worried Progressive Era anti-vice reformers, but by the mid-twentieth century, heroin addiction came to symbolize irredeemable deviance. "Creating the American Junkie" examines how psychiatristsand psychologists produced a construction of opiate addicts as deviants with inherently flawed personalities caught in the grip of a dependency from which few would ever escape. Their portrayal of the tough urban addict helped bolster the federal government's policy of drug prohibition and created a social context that made the life of the American heroin addict, or junkie, more, not less, precarious in the wake of Progressive Era reforms.

Weaving together the accounts of addicts and researchers, Acker examines how the construction of addiction in the early twentieth century was strongly influenced by the professional concerns of psychiatrists seeking to increase their medical authority; by the disciplinary ambitions of pharmacologists to build a drug development infrastructure; and by the American Medical Association's campaign to reduce prescriptions of opiates and to absolve physicians in private practice from the necessity of treating difficult addicts as patients. In contrast, early sociological studies of heroin addicts formed a basis for criticizing the criminalization of addiction. By 1940, Acker concludes, a particular configuration of ideas about opiate addiction was firmly in place and remained essentially stable until the enormous demographic changes in drug use of the 1960s and 1970s prompted changes in the understanding of addiction--and in public policy.

Luigi Zoja argues that the pervasive abuse of drugs in our society can in large part be ascribed to a resurgence of the collective need for initiation and initiatory structures: a longing for something sacred underlies our culture's manic drive toward excessive consumption. In a society without ritual, the drug addict seeks not so much the thrill of a high as the satisfaction of an inner need for a participation mystique in the dominant religion of our times: consumerism.

This book provides the first comprehensive, critical analysis of the drugs problem in Ireland over the last thirty years with a particular focus on the role of drugs in crime and the role of prohibition in generating drug-related harms. Using Ireland's disastrous history of prohibition and the failure of its well-resourced harm reduction programme as a case study, the book goes on to challenge the global dominance of prohibitionist ideology, which is seen as an emotionally driven and fundamentally irrational belief system, which flies in the face of overwhelming evidence that prohibition does more harm than good. Prohibition's defences against the mass of evidence demonstrating its detrimental effects and ultimate futility are one by one exposed and dismantled. The book argues that international and national law should be based on a realistic appraisal of human nature and that a scientific view of human psychology and of the human condition explains not only the value and irresistible attraction of mood-altering substances, but also the young's stubborn resistance to the prohibitionist message. The book argues that society would make substantial gains from accepting the libertarian view that there is a right to use drugs so long as others' rights are not infringed. A non-coercive harm reduction approach based on the right to use drugs could have major benefits, eliminating many of the ill-effects of prohibition and creating a positive attitudinal dynamic that lowers the irresponsible and destructive use of drugs. -- .

While knowledge on substance abuse and addictions is expanding rapidly, clinical practice still lags behind. This state-of-the-art book brings together leading experts to describe what treatment and prevention would look like if it were based on the best science available. The volume incorporates developmental, neurobiological, genetic, behavioral, and social-environmental perspectives. Tightly edited chapters summarize current thinking on the nature and causes of alcohol and other drug problems; discuss what works at the individual, family, and societal levels; and offer robust principles for developing more effective, humane treatments and services.

In a searing critique of the War on Drugs and other attempts to eradicate "getting high," Lenson ventures outside the conventional genres of drug writing and looks at the drug debate from a lost, and often forbidden, point of view: the user's. Walking a fine line between the antidrug hysteria prevalent in our culture and an uncritical advocacy of drug use, he describes in provocative detail the experiences and dynamics of drugs of pleasure and desire. "Drug epicurean David Lenson claims the 'Just Say No' campaign of the Reagan years was an attempt to explicitly end rational discourse on the subject. The man's own whacked-out but brilliant 'discourse, ' On Drugs makes philosophical points about narcotics that also apply to java and hooch. Lenson argues that once all mood-altering substances are eliminated, sobriety becomes a meaningless term." --Voice Literary Supplement "On Drugs is heterodox and iconoclastic to the core."--Boston Phoenix "In the national debate and reevaluation of attitudes toward drugs, this is a different kind of contribution, one that is speculative, discursive, and visionary." --Library Journal "Lenson's magnificent book is a perceptive mapping of the rippling waves of undiscovered solar systems within our brain. It will comfort the fearful and guide the unprepared. A classic!" --Timothy Leary "Lenson analyzes our culture's love-hate relationship with mood-altering substances from the user's point of view in On Drugs. He writes about the differences between 'drugs of desire' (mainly cocaine, crack, and speed) and 'drugs of pleasure' (mainly marijuana and hallucinogens. The former he sees as reflecting the main ideology of Western culture--consumerism--in that frequent users tend to fixate on acquiring more to the exclusion of everything else, while the latter tend to interdict the consumerist mind-set by letting users savor everyday activities and objects already at hand." --Utne Reader "The best work I've read on drugs comes from outside the cultural studies-loop. In his remarkable On Drugs, David Lenson, who teaches comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, uses a phenomenological approach to describe the effects of various drugs. What does it feel like to be high on pot, coke, LSD? What, if anything, is to be gained from them? What are the costs? What attracts individuals to different drugs? One of Lenson's theses, brilliant and controversial, is that some kinds of drugs deliver us from the consumer world view into realms of contemplation--and are officially despised in part for doing so. What the guardians of official culture cannot tolerate, Lenson suggests, is any form of consciousnes that rises above getting and spending. What are we to do about the drug crisis? Lenson's advice is invaluable: Throw words at it, he says, lots of words. We need to use the cultural-studies movement to break the intellectual and classroom silence on drugs. We need to re-educate ourselves about drugs, and in so doing help educate our students." --Chronicle of Higher Education David Lenson is professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also a rock and blues musician who has played saxophone with John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells.

When the San Jose Mercury News ran a controversial series of stories in 1996 on the relationship between the CIA, the Contras, and crack, they reignited the issue of the intelligence agency's connections to drug trafficking, initially brought to light during the Vietnam War and then again by the Iran-Contra affair. Broad in scope and extensively documented, "Cocaine Politics" shows that under the cover of national security and covert operations, the U.S. government has repeatedly collaborated with and protected major international drug traffickers. A new preface discusses developments of the last six years, including the Mercury News stories and the public reaction they provoked.

Everyone knows what intoxication and drunkenness are, what they look like, how to define and measure them and what their consequences are. At least we might assume so given the ways these words are used by the media, by politicians and policy makers and by various medical, educational and legal experts in Australia and around the world. A whole variety of concerns about young people, individual and public health, road safety, sexual assault and violence are connected to these taken-for-granted understandings of intoxication and drunkenness. Drawing on an extensive review of research from biomedicine, psychology, sociology and legal studies, and from news media reporting, the authors reveal a far more complex picture. This is a picture marked by little agreement on how to define intoxication and drunkenness, how to measure intoxication, what getting drunk means to those who drink (including young people, men and women and people from different cultural and national backgrounds), and where responsibility lies for many of the individual, social, medical and legal consequences of intoxication and drunkenness. Smashed! presents an overview of the history of these concerns and an extensive account of the many meanings of intoxication and drunkenness at the start of the 21st century. It provides a valuable resource for researchers, policy makers, the media and members of the community who are involved in these ongoing, often emotive, debates.